“I like to think mainstream conservatives disliked him because he showed them what they really were, but maybe I overthink it — maybe it was just because he didn’t show them the proper respect.”
As the kids say, why not both? It had to be galling to them, with all the effort and ivy-league erudition they put into trying to hide the fact they were racist oligarchs in order to make their “message” palatable to Mr. and Mrs. America, to have Trump come along and just speak the unvarnished truth of what they really believed and not only get away with it, but be hailed as the new hero of the Right.
We all know they’ll fluff DeSantis until or unless Trump wins, and then it will be “Ah! Well, nevertheless…”
Yeah, Trump may be somewhat analogous to a stage of the painting in The Portrait of Dorian Grey with respect to movement conservatism, progressing from, say, Barry Goldwater (rugged individual!) to Ronald Reagan (morning in America with Dutch Dementia!) to W (let’s have a compassionate beer!) to Trump (crude but effective, but don’t linger).
But conservatives have courted right-wing extremism for decades, if subtly. After the horror of the Oklahoma City bombing they loudly refused to acknowledge that their propaganda and tacit support of right-wing militias might have encouraged it, and resisted attempts to investigate domestic terrorism of rightist and racist origin. This, as much as the total absence of any substantive policy other than cementing plutocratic position in the hierarchy, led to the image of Trump the GOP beheld with disbelief in its mirror. But, as if it were merely a bad haircut, they got used to it and even embraced the shaggy image.
Me, yelling again: Republicanism has been a cargo cult in search of another god ever since Reagan. Trump was perfectly predictable, really. We just gave them the benefit of the doubt.
"Conservatives, broadly speaking, are addicted to the political equivalent of the tent revival: wanting to believe, wanting affirmation, exalting the traveling preacher until that person moves on and the next one arrives.
They are adrenaline junkies forming serial attachments to the evangelists of their anger. Their devotion to one appears complete until it collapses or is supplanted by another. They are addicted to the feeling of falling in love."
I would like to take Lucy, Charlie Brown , that Godamn football, Will Rogers and the words feckless and messaging and put them all in the middle of a well armed and determined circular firing squad.
Please do, and don't forget messaging's partner-in-crime, "focus." Republicans can run and win on a grab-bag of half a dozen grievances, but Democrats are required to spend the whole damn election arguing about what's the ONE thing they're allowed to talk about.
*looks around nervously* Man, I don't really like Peanuts because childhood but I always found the Lucy and the Football thing to be pretty descriptive of a lot of shit.
Peanuts childhood was a cruel, dark, and cynical place. I loved it, because it matched my own. The very first strip was Charlie Brown being mocked by a group of girls, going home and turning on the radio to hear "and what is more delightful than the happy sound of children laughing", and the last panel of him kicking the radio across the room. I felt seen, as the kids used to say. It turned saccharine pretty quickly, but that darkness was always lurking.
I guess John Derbyshire must have" retired" prior to Trump's appearance in national politics- cause you know Derb would say or do anything to get into the dressing room of the Miss Teen Universe Pageant.
I guess if you're an up and coming aspiring conservative pundit type you might want to do some writing for the National Review so you don't have to come right out and list
The funny thing about conservatives is, they don't mind. They will run that RNC bus over anyone, included the sainted Reagan. They have always had a very keen sense of how to move the old guys out of the on-camera seats and into the boxes. It's very Logan's Run over there.
Us: That's not age, it's experience!
Them: That's not youth, it's longevity.
We're both half right, and once again a total willingness to shoot any hostage wins the siege. Seriously, guys. What if we didn't *run* the olds, we just kept them on speed dial and let them host seminars for the youngs?
(I say this as an old so old I just used the phrase "speed dial". )
Most male-dominated organizations are okay with creepy old guy stuff. If you remember WaPo's Richard Cohen ("I'm a funny guy! People tell me that!"), he was a famous serial sexual harasser who cost the Post big, but they kept him on for reasons that will never be clear (since his columns genuinely sucked from ANY political, writing, or editing perspective).
Hearted only because it made me laugh in a way the made me feel really bad and I am not the least bit happy about any of it so please refrain but also please don't.
Gonna be even funnier the second time the National Review disses Donnie before they support Donnie. Already boring.
The problem for them and the rest of the old time conservatives is, you know, Republican voters. It's like the latest Cowboys/Yankees schism among conservatives, sort of. The NR guys and their ilk (shout out to Charlie Sykes' Substack which regularly gives me laughs) are dedicated to using winks and nods while conservative media like radio, Fox, OAN, et al, base their businesses on shouting it all out as loudly as possible. And Donnie is the face of that. The base loves how he echos the insanity they love and have committed to. Gonna take way more than National Review, Sykes, the MSM tut-tutting Trump2024 to turn the base away from him. Too, rejecting Trump, for the hoi polloi requires some sort of admission that they personally are wrong, unacceptable, whatever. They are way too deeply invested in him to dump him now.
I'm so old that I remember when the Dem base insisted on nominating guaranteed losers. I'm enjoying seeing the GOP going through the same crap.
It's weird, because if Trump taught us anything, it's that there's no need for consistency, because nobody cares. You can be for X on Tuesday morning, and by the afternoon you're TOTALLY AGAINST X, and everyone shrugs, who expects consistency from a politician?
So why don't voters enjoy the same freedom? OK, you voted for Trump, why is it a lifetime commitment? Vote for whoever the fuck you want in the moment, NOBODY'S KEEPING TRACK.
By echoing the bullshit they believe from conservative media, he’s flattering them like no normal politician does. They’re married to him, making it very hard to quit them.
As since that idiocy is a real problem for the GOP, I’m fine it.
I want to be sympathetic, and I've read the stuff about cults and all, but also I know some of these people, and they were always monsters. Trump didn't break them. He told them they were great and everybody else was broken.
Seriously, fuck them.
(I've been watching Blade a lot recently, and it is very much a "These people are our FOOD for god's sakes" thing. They have always been looking for someone to hunt. Now they're hunting in packs, like any emboldened vampire.)
Yeah, I dunno. I'm navigating the peaks and troughs with the existential despair that is global warming. As some inadvertent harbinger once said, "I don't worry about history. I won't be around to read it."
Only solutions are we deal with it as best we can ourselves or live with however it manifests. Our leaders won’t do what needs to be done, in part it’s an absolute global problem: all nations work together or, again, we do what we can. Or not.
A giant middle finger to the cultural Left. Yep, that's what it's all about. That's what EVERYTHING is about for these people. The constant never-ending war against the cultural Left.
Hard to believe that entire entire political movement arose and captured one of our only two political parties based on . . . the fact that they can't say "n****r" in public anymore and they can't compliment their secretary's tits. Because that's what the "cultural Left" did: Made it socially unacceptable to be a troglodyte.
So is it any wonder Donald Trump is their perfect avatar, their dream candidate, the magnificent embodiment of the conservative id frolicking naked in the fields?
yes, what they crave is to be vulgar, to be naughty, to be politically incorrect, and trump showed them that this could be acceptable if enough of them decided it was. we'll be a while turning this ship around.
The impulse to be vulgar and naughty, I get, who hasn't felt that at one time or another? The part I don't get is why your vulgarity and naughtiness should be focused on the management of United States Government. It's like you're into some weirdly specific style of porn, and now you want to post office to issue a set of commemorative stamps for it. Get your freak on privately, if you wish, but please keep your kinks out of my Congress.
This. I'm less surprised by how willing some people are to see the world burn than by how cheaply they'd sell everything including themselves. Holy shit, *that's* what you fuckers wanted? That's all? That's your libertarian paradise? I'm guessing well into his thirties this all could have been prevented by giving Trump a busy box that makes fart noises and yells "F*gg*t" at his sons.
It would take much less for the rest of them. Obama mocked Trump, and now we have fewer rights and we will all suffer if not die. Probably both. Even *his* life sucks compared to what he had before he lashed out. Elon made an equally impulsive decision to lash out when his feelings were hurt, and now we're about to lose major global infrastructure. (Remember, a sewer is also infrastructure.) Scale it down: What does my uncle want? To see people suffer, mainly, but mostly because he thinks he's lost as they've gained.
We have got to teach these people to self-soothe, if nothing else. We gotta stop teaching them it's okay to act like this. Which is what Obama was doing, and I am still all for it, but sometimes it backfires badly.
Maybe it's having politically come of age in the great age of political think tanks, or maybe it's being too damned white to want to believe how ugly and culturally innate racism is, but some part of me I do not trust wants to believe it was less a product of generations wanting to bleed the host dry for short term gain including intangibles like not having to feel ashamed when people hear you say slurs and more a few people at a few key points in the system honestly thinking this is a better world they're building and you can't make an omelet.
Realistically, the nation's been a neurotic tangle in the making from the beginning. Maybe humans inherently are and we just speedran it here. I'm inclined to conspiracies by habit and nature.
But damn, one tribunal's cheaper than thousands, and someone's gonna have to engrave this on the monument that explains where we went, and in the words of SNL when it was pretty funny because we hadn't caught on yet, "Can you believe I'm losing to this guy?"
Nov 17, 2022·edited Nov 17, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso
Roy, you silly thing, you don't understand that National Review "has never institutionally endorsed Trump," according to our dear friend the Baseball Crank (https://twitter.com/baseballcrank/status/1592920749769383937?s=20&t=Ycd58YDwucVRugRqL29vwg). So, you know, there's actually no hypocrisy at all going on here. In fact, you're the one who's being hypocritical (somehow) by pointing it out!
Jeez, the replies to that. "Hatred of Trump is their North Star." Right, buddy, Democrats have had control of the House, Senate and White House for two years and the ONLY thing they've done is hate on Trump. Nope, can't think of a single thing they've done other than that.
And if you want to see what a House of Representatives motivated solely by hatred looks like, strap in, because you're gonna get quite a show.
Yeah, the NR & such will fall in line just like little fashie kids will always do if DJT wins (shudder!) or even becomes the GOP nominee. But between then & now, DJT's name is not on a single ballot. At his "announcement" folks in the crowd were yawning & trying to leave (ushers at the door were preventing them, I hear). He may have a "non-competition" agreement with the party office, but is such an agreement legally defensible? If polling numbers are bad, they may dare to take him on in court. If that happened, what impact would that have on the entire election? Re-nominating the Turtle for Senate minority leader may not be the best sign for the campaign either -- if the GOP thought their Dear Leader a sure bet, they might have instead put a hardline toadie in that position.
Yeah, a complete lack of principles means they'd be happy lining up behind anyone who they think could win. All that needs to happen is for the Goddamn voters to pick someone else. Let's put our fate in the hands of crazy old white folks in Iowa and New Hampshire, shall we?
Well, what's the GOP's alternative? The retreads Trump mopped the floor with? DeSantis is gonna have to at least place in a primary outside Florida before they trade Needy Amin for Stalin without the charm. They'd love a pliable movie star like Reagan, but nobody has stepped up so far. Clint Eastwood would win in a walk if he weren't a walking corpse, and as Gil Scott Heron said of Reagan, "they really wanted John Wayne".
The other half is that a majority of Republicans truly believe they are in an existential struggle with Democrats, that if they don't hold on to power by any means necessary they will be destroyed/replaced/canceled/eliminated in some vague but apocalyptic way. That's the root of all the Crazy. It's all hazy feelings of Doom, and even Trump is preferable to the Void staring into them.
" majority of Republicans truly believe they are in an existential struggle with Democrats, that if they don't hold on to power by any means necessary they will be destroyed/replaced/canceled/eliminated in some vague but apocalyptic way..."
Well, who can blame them? Two years of Democratic control of the White House, the Senate and the House, and gas is now THREE DOLLARS AND FIFTY CENTS A GALLON. If that's not a holocaust, I don't know what is. Plus the Democrats trying to murder them, either with lower prices on their prescription drugs or when the bridge they drive over every morning doesn't collapse because we fixed it through the infrastructure bill. Oh, they're crafty, those Democrats.
Nobody gets any more establishment than old McTurtle, and he’s said he’ll vote for him if Tubby’s nominated. Ron DeSantis has the charisma and appeal oh day-old McDonald’s french fries, and when his attempt at getting the nod goes down in flames he’ll line right up behind the imperial golf cart with the likes of former Gov. Kris KrispieCreme and other famous, nominal anti-Trump cons, both in office and out. The November election results were the trigger of another episode of what passes for soul searching in the GOP psyche (wherein they make it obvious to everyone but themselves that they have no soul), inevitably ending with them concluding they must double down on the things that wrought the disaster in the first place. All the while, the MSM will burble mud-puddle-deep musings about “What’s next for the Republican Party,” gullibly (or cynically) acting as if the Repukes are acting in good faith or in the interest of the nation. The dynamics of the Republican turn toward fascism in tension with the US’s liberal democratic ideals will definitely leave the national polity twisted, perhaps beyond recognition. It ain’t over yet. Buckle up!
But it all depends on what some voters in Iowa and New Hampshire decide two years from now. Given the average age of Iowa and New Hampshire Republican primary voters, half of the people who voted for Trump last time could be dead by 2024.
"How many Trump voters need to refuse vaccination for his share of the New Hampshire primary vote to drop below 30%?" would be an AWESOME word problem.
Comparing Obama to Hitler encapsulates the total wisdom of Thomas Sowell, Professor of the Uncle Tom Chair of Economic Sophistry at the Stanford Institute (no relation to the Palo Alto university). Trump became famous because of a silly TV “reality” show since Michael Milkin and Ivan Boesky weren’t available. He also was vehemently anti-Obama, which was what the Nat Rev boys and all Republicans really cared about. His campaign will be all racism and attacks on Biden, which is what Republicans care about now. The pseudoconservatives will get on board after Trump crushes DeSantis in the primaries because they’ll never back a Democrat.
Give him his due, he also thinks people should be allowed, in that great libertarian term of art, to sell any organs they might think they can do without.
Ah, Chuckles Krauthammer. Sometimes when you get weighed down by all the good people taken from us too soon, it’s restorative to remember late, unlamented ghouls like Charles Krauthammer who are no longer around to work evil.
That feeling might be uncharitable and unchristian, but I’m going to own it.
Just-the-Tip Trumpers was always a perfect locution. You knew "just the tip" came with empty promises like "Don't worry, I'll pull out when the tax cuts kick in".
Nah, it's Roy in his Village Voice Years, which means it's a pure joy to read. Roy would never recommend you read something from the National Review itself, he's got your safety and best interests in mind.
Props to Trump, for finally outing the entirety of republicanism for the hardcore fascist enterprise it was/is. Anyone who does not see it is not looking (even the blind got braille). And those who shrug and go all in anyway are simply exposing their brownshirt selves (and leaving themselves wide open to the purging that inevitably follows...)
Uh... BRB. Wanna go read a really funny Bill Kristol thing for a change. He's usually good for an unselfaware phrase or two, but I always enjoy a little mortification of the flesh timelapse. Don't kinkshame me.
I got distracted by the Mona Charen piece. Man, she really still hates Trump. Gotta give her that. If she lives another, say, fifty years, she might evolve into an actual human being. (Please to remember I still don't trust Arianna Huffington.)
Then, you know, the article written by the guy who called a sitting Supreme Court Justice a goat fucking child molester and is now on your TV everywhere doing ham commercials or whatever. (Look, I keep the volume off.) He's still a foul beast, which no one will be surprised by, and was frankly okay with just the tip back then, too.
I figured I'd read the Ben Domenech article written by someone else, so I'm onto the baffling Steven Hayward thing. "After Obama--after three generations of liberalism *only slightly* interrupted by the Reagan Years", it begins, my emphasis, his apparent brainworms.
"The president will need to be bold in challenging the runaway power and reach of his own branch, against the fury of the bureaucracy itself, its client groups, and the media. This boldness is necessary to restore the restraint that a republican executive should have in our constitutional order."
Dude was literally mad Trump probably wouldn't wreck up the place and pwn the libz enough.
Mark Helprin: "A diet, caffeine-free Marxist (really, the only thing wrong with being a Marxist is being a Marxist); a driven, leftist crook; and an explosive, know-nothing demagogue —all are competing to see who can be even more like Mussolini than is Obama." And after calling Hillary "Our own Evita", he still says Trump is worse.
Kristol does the same, but also tuts about how vulgar Trump is, and also complains that he's not likely to disrupt liberal hegemony because "Hasn’t Donald Trump always been a man inclined to go along — indeed, impatient to get along — with history?"
Yes, Donald Trump, man of great respect for our institutions and well aware of how to make a legacy everyone will respect (why he was even almost smart enough about all that shit to not run), maybe a bit too wishy washy to really make any changes. Clearly that's the big problem here, since your patrician ears tune out the bigotry anyway.
He's still posting bullshit about how vulgar the man is, and how he worries about Trump's authoritarian tendencies, but I'm getting the impression they've traded safewords. Probably by courier, because all that gilt decor is a little uncouth. There's an element of "Won't someone rid me of all this meddlesome tolerance", and I'm pretty sure the whole thing was originally written in "Scorpion to Frog Pidgin".
The real joy, though, is possibly the Edwin Meese III piece. You remember ol'Edwin. He was mostly mad in 2016 that Trump was violating Reagan's Eleventh Commandment. (Incidentally, isn't this blasphemy?)
Given that his twitter stops at 2018 when he was cheering on Trump's rein of error, I'm assuming he's disappeared, mostly because I don't really want to spend much time on National Review even in an incognito window.
His last few tweets, and I assume whatever birdcage liner he's putting out now, are mostly the equivalent of him hiring a hooker and calling him by his dead lover's name. He can't make Trump *be* Reagan, but, you know, if the lights are off, baby, let's talk about those judges.
Dude. That is some mortification of the flesh by other means. This fucker opened the goddamned puzzle box in public, spent a few years flaying himself, and now he's the new Junior Cenobite. This poor bastard has got stigmata on his back in the image of Reagan.
(I'm aware that's all blasphemy, too, but that god has to get through my goddess to get to me, and I have my doubts about the omnipotence thing. Have you seen most of his followers lately?)
I have new respect for Roy, and wonder if he's interested in some nausea tips I've picked up from Disabled Twitter.
Best way to watch commercials, especially those MIL-TECH BATTLE commercials with the chud in the khaki T-shirt implying you must REALLY hate both the troops AND America if you don't buy the cheap plastic crap he's shilling.
"some illegal immigrants are violent criminals,” Geraghty said, and when they do crimes they’re “briefly detained by police authorities and then released..."
Huh. Sounds awfully familiar somehow, but I just can't recall..
And a very weak attack on immigrants. You could hardly think of a demographic, some of which are *not* violent criminals. Maybe children under 5? but not for lack of motivation.
I wonder, is this possibly a reference to the fact that MOTHERFUCKING STEVE FUCKING BANNON IS STILL NOT IN FUCKING PRISON DESPITE BEING FUCKING CONVICTED AND FUCKING SENTENCED? Sorry, some things just set me off, I mean, fuck.
As someone with a decades long hate-on for Grover Norquist that will have me cursing him every Friday until one of us is dead and when I curse people I mean it, I respect this dedication.
Horrifying true detail: I looked him up again trying to remember why it's Fridays, I still don't know, it might be the day he was born, and my top search result was "Grover Norquist on EBay! Yes Seriously We Have Grover Norquist On EBay."
I nearly clicked, but it will turn out I can't afford him and Elon will probably end up with him, and he'll like that. What's the tax stuff like on GoFundMes, anyway? I guess I could ask Norquist.
Hey, you need an emetic? He's on the board of people who select Time Magazine's Person of the Year.
“I like to think mainstream conservatives disliked him because he showed them what they really were, but maybe I overthink it — maybe it was just because he didn’t show them the proper respect.”
As the kids say, why not both? It had to be galling to them, with all the effort and ivy-league erudition they put into trying to hide the fact they were racist oligarchs in order to make their “message” palatable to Mr. and Mrs. America, to have Trump come along and just speak the unvarnished truth of what they really believed and not only get away with it, but be hailed as the new hero of the Right.
We all know they’ll fluff DeSantis until or unless Trump wins, and then it will be “Ah! Well, nevertheless…”
...and (*choke!*) the base still ignores what they're saying.
Yeah, Trump may be somewhat analogous to a stage of the painting in The Portrait of Dorian Grey with respect to movement conservatism, progressing from, say, Barry Goldwater (rugged individual!) to Ronald Reagan (morning in America with Dutch Dementia!) to W (let’s have a compassionate beer!) to Trump (crude but effective, but don’t linger).
But conservatives have courted right-wing extremism for decades, if subtly. After the horror of the Oklahoma City bombing they loudly refused to acknowledge that their propaganda and tacit support of right-wing militias might have encouraged it, and resisted attempts to investigate domestic terrorism of rightist and racist origin. This, as much as the total absence of any substantive policy other than cementing plutocratic position in the hierarchy, led to the image of Trump the GOP beheld with disbelief in its mirror. But, as if it were merely a bad haircut, they got used to it and even embraced the shaggy image.
Me, yelling again: Republicanism has been a cargo cult in search of another god ever since Reagan. Trump was perfectly predictable, really. We just gave them the benefit of the doubt.
"Conservatives, broadly speaking, are addicted to the political equivalent of the tent revival: wanting to believe, wanting affirmation, exalting the traveling preacher until that person moves on and the next one arrives.
They are adrenaline junkies forming serial attachments to the evangelists of their anger. Their devotion to one appears complete until it collapses or is supplanted by another. They are addicted to the feeling of falling in love."
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/16/opinion/trump-2024-election.html
omg: "Just the Tip Trumpers." It's a polite description, and also lewd. Bravo!
An Edroso classic for decades since 2016.
It's like replacing that tired "Lucy and the football" analogy with "I promise I won't come in your mouth!"
I would like to take Lucy, Charlie Brown , that Godamn football, Will Rogers and the words feckless and messaging and put them all in the middle of a well armed and determined circular firing squad.
Please do, and don't forget messaging's partner-in-crime, "focus." Republicans can run and win on a grab-bag of half a dozen grievances, but Democrats are required to spend the whole damn election arguing about what's the ONE thing they're allowed to talk about.
*looks around nervously* Man, I don't really like Peanuts because childhood but I always found the Lucy and the Football thing to be pretty descriptive of a lot of shit.
I am cringe, etc.
Peanuts childhood was a cruel, dark, and cynical place. I loved it, because it matched my own. The very first strip was Charlie Brown being mocked by a group of girls, going home and turning on the radio to hear "and what is more delightful than the happy sound of children laughing", and the last panel of him kicking the radio across the room. I felt seen, as the kids used to say. It turned saccharine pretty quickly, but that darkness was always lurking.
and they told me it would only hurt for a little while, too!
I guess John Derbyshire must have" retired" prior to Trump's appearance in national politics- cause you know Derb would say or do anything to get into the dressing room of the Miss Teen Universe Pageant.
I guess if you're an up and coming aspiring conservative pundit type you might want to do some writing for the National Review so you don't have to come right out and list
"fawning syncophancy" as a job skill.
Derbyshire was shown the door after writing a column about Black people on the bus.
A bridge too far even for them. (Also their Hitlerjugend needed the column space.)
Yeah, probably more that. Also, my theory is he hit on someone's daughter.
The funny thing about conservatives is, they don't mind. They will run that RNC bus over anyone, included the sainted Reagan. They have always had a very keen sense of how to move the old guys out of the on-camera seats and into the boxes. It's very Logan's Run over there.
Us: That's not age, it's experience!
Them: That's not youth, it's longevity.
We're both half right, and once again a total willingness to shoot any hostage wins the siege. Seriously, guys. What if we didn't *run* the olds, we just kept them on speed dial and let them host seminars for the youngs?
(I say this as an old so old I just used the phrase "speed dial". )
-he controversially stated that women's physical attractiveness peaks between ages 15 and 20-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Derbyshire
He is just a creepy fuck all the way around. He wrote the article referenced above in '06. I honestly thought he got canned for it. Nope .
NR was OK with the creepy old guy stuff.
Most male-dominated organizations are okay with creepy old guy stuff. If you remember WaPo's Richard Cohen ("I'm a funny guy! People tell me that!"), he was a famous serial sexual harasser who cost the Post big, but they kept him on for reasons that will never be clear (since his columns genuinely sucked from ANY political, writing, or editing perspective).
Standing athwart teenage girls yelling
" Who's your Big Dad now?"
Hearted only because it made me laugh in a way the made me feel really bad and I am not the least bit happy about any of it so please refrain but also please don't.
Also, YIKES!
Carry on, carry on.
You know, ditto, and I'm cool with it. Catharsis. As an apparent female of the species, it's nice to be reminded most people think this shit is wrong.
Dude, yikes. I'm gonna die laughing.
Ha-ha funny or funny-in-the-head funny?
Both, surely.
Also add "Tell the truth – does my Hitlery mustache look funny?"
*snicker*
Gonna be even funnier the second time the National Review disses Donnie before they support Donnie. Already boring.
The problem for them and the rest of the old time conservatives is, you know, Republican voters. It's like the latest Cowboys/Yankees schism among conservatives, sort of. The NR guys and their ilk (shout out to Charlie Sykes' Substack which regularly gives me laughs) are dedicated to using winks and nods while conservative media like radio, Fox, OAN, et al, base their businesses on shouting it all out as loudly as possible. And Donnie is the face of that. The base loves how he echos the insanity they love and have committed to. Gonna take way more than National Review, Sykes, the MSM tut-tutting Trump2024 to turn the base away from him. Too, rejecting Trump, for the hoi polloi requires some sort of admission that they personally are wrong, unacceptable, whatever. They are way too deeply invested in him to dump him now.
I'm so old that I remember when the Dem base insisted on nominating guaranteed losers. I'm enjoying seeing the GOP going through the same crap.
It's weird, because if Trump taught us anything, it's that there's no need for consistency, because nobody cares. You can be for X on Tuesday morning, and by the afternoon you're TOTALLY AGAINST X, and everyone shrugs, who expects consistency from a politician?
So why don't voters enjoy the same freedom? OK, you voted for Trump, why is it a lifetime commitment? Vote for whoever the fuck you want in the moment, NOBODY'S KEEPING TRACK.
By echoing the bullshit they believe from conservative media, he’s flattering them like no normal politician does. They’re married to him, making it very hard to quit them.
As since that idiocy is a real problem for the GOP, I’m fine it.
"They’re married to him..."
Right, and like all of Trump's marriages, commitment only points in one direction.
😂
Sucks to be them except for the part that the abuse and mistrust have been well earned and fully deserved.
I want to be sympathetic, and I've read the stuff about cults and all, but also I know some of these people, and they were always monsters. Trump didn't break them. He told them they were great and everybody else was broken.
Seriously, fuck them.
(I've been watching Blade a lot recently, and it is very much a "These people are our FOOD for god's sakes" thing. They have always been looking for someone to hunt. Now they're hunting in packs, like any emboldened vampire.)
You say that now!
Yes and no. Their culture is to suffer so the question’s just how much they will in the next couple of years, not whether they will.
Yeah, I dunno. I'm navigating the peaks and troughs with the existential despair that is global warming. As some inadvertent harbinger once said, "I don't worry about history. I won't be around to read it."
Only solutions are we deal with it as best we can ourselves or live with however it manifests. Our leaders won’t do what needs to be done, in part it’s an absolute global problem: all nations work together or, again, we do what we can. Or not.
Their culture is for other people (the "lesser") to suffer. The Elect cannot be superseded by the Elected.
A giant middle finger to the cultural Left. Yep, that's what it's all about. That's what EVERYTHING is about for these people. The constant never-ending war against the cultural Left.
Hard to believe that entire entire political movement arose and captured one of our only two political parties based on . . . the fact that they can't say "n****r" in public anymore and they can't compliment their secretary's tits. Because that's what the "cultural Left" did: Made it socially unacceptable to be a troglodyte.
So is it any wonder Donald Trump is their perfect avatar, their dream candidate, the magnificent embodiment of the conservative id frolicking naked in the fields?
Could control of our $6.7 trillion federal government have any other purpose? Not that I'm aware of.
yes, what they crave is to be vulgar, to be naughty, to be politically incorrect, and trump showed them that this could be acceptable if enough of them decided it was. we'll be a while turning this ship around.
The impulse to be vulgar and naughty, I get, who hasn't felt that at one time or another? The part I don't get is why your vulgarity and naughtiness should be focused on the management of United States Government. It's like you're into some weirdly specific style of porn, and now you want to post office to issue a set of commemorative stamps for it. Get your freak on privately, if you wish, but please keep your kinks out of my Congress.
This. I'm less surprised by how willing some people are to see the world burn than by how cheaply they'd sell everything including themselves. Holy shit, *that's* what you fuckers wanted? That's all? That's your libertarian paradise? I'm guessing well into his thirties this all could have been prevented by giving Trump a busy box that makes fart noises and yells "F*gg*t" at his sons.
It would take much less for the rest of them. Obama mocked Trump, and now we have fewer rights and we will all suffer if not die. Probably both. Even *his* life sucks compared to what he had before he lashed out. Elon made an equally impulsive decision to lash out when his feelings were hurt, and now we're about to lose major global infrastructure. (Remember, a sewer is also infrastructure.) Scale it down: What does my uncle want? To see people suffer, mainly, but mostly because he thinks he's lost as they've gained.
We have got to teach these people to self-soothe, if nothing else. We gotta stop teaching them it's okay to act like this. Which is what Obama was doing, and I am still all for it, but sometimes it backfires badly.
Maybe it's having politically come of age in the great age of political think tanks, or maybe it's being too damned white to want to believe how ugly and culturally innate racism is, but some part of me I do not trust wants to believe it was less a product of generations wanting to bleed the host dry for short term gain including intangibles like not having to feel ashamed when people hear you say slurs and more a few people at a few key points in the system honestly thinking this is a better world they're building and you can't make an omelet.
Realistically, the nation's been a neurotic tangle in the making from the beginning. Maybe humans inherently are and we just speedran it here. I'm inclined to conspiracies by habit and nature.
But damn, one tribunal's cheaper than thousands, and someone's gonna have to engrave this on the monument that explains where we went, and in the words of SNL when it was pretty funny because we hadn't caught on yet, "Can you believe I'm losing to this guy?"
I am not high, just annoying.
Our Harpy can not be annoying, only annoyed... <hug>
Twitter is melting down, my sib. I despair some. Expect prodigal son bullshit from me soon. Nobody touch the fatted calf, I'll bring donuts.
Gotta keep the fatted calf, what else are we going to fry the donuts in?
So OK, I'll go full Bern here & say, "You despair some. I despair some as well. That makes a despair."
Thomas Sowell, who compared Trump’s populism with “Juan Perón in Argentina, Obama in America, or Hitler in Germany”…
Oh, I see what you did there, you can't just do an end-run around Godwin's law with your Obama=Hitler by throwing Juan Perón in for a threesome!
Yeah...coulda worked a dig at a coupla California guvs too, but 'Don't Cry For Me, Pasadena' doesn't really resonate...
Roy, you silly thing, you don't understand that National Review "has never institutionally endorsed Trump," according to our dear friend the Baseball Crank (https://twitter.com/baseballcrank/status/1592920749769383937?s=20&t=Ycd58YDwucVRugRqL29vwg). So, you know, there's actually no hypocrisy at all going on here. In fact, you're the one who's being hypocritical (somehow) by pointing it out!
Jeez, the replies to that. "Hatred of Trump is their North Star." Right, buddy, Democrats have had control of the House, Senate and White House for two years and the ONLY thing they've done is hate on Trump. Nope, can't think of a single thing they've done other than that.
And if you want to see what a House of Representatives motivated solely by hatred looks like, strap in, because you're gonna get quite a show.
Yeah, the NR & such will fall in line just like little fashie kids will always do if DJT wins (shudder!) or even becomes the GOP nominee. But between then & now, DJT's name is not on a single ballot. At his "announcement" folks in the crowd were yawning & trying to leave (ushers at the door were preventing them, I hear). He may have a "non-competition" agreement with the party office, but is such an agreement legally defensible? If polling numbers are bad, they may dare to take him on in court. If that happened, what impact would that have on the entire election? Re-nominating the Turtle for Senate minority leader may not be the best sign for the campaign either -- if the GOP thought their Dear Leader a sure bet, they might have instead put a hardline toadie in that position.
Yeah, a complete lack of principles means they'd be happy lining up behind anyone who they think could win. All that needs to happen is for the Goddamn voters to pick someone else. Let's put our fate in the hands of crazy old white folks in Iowa and New Hampshire, shall we?
"Yeah, the NR & such will fall in line just like little fashie kids will always do"
It's Axis-omatic!
Well, what's the GOP's alternative? The retreads Trump mopped the floor with? DeSantis is gonna have to at least place in a primary outside Florida before they trade Needy Amin for Stalin without the charm. They'd love a pliable movie star like Reagan, but nobody has stepped up so far. Clint Eastwood would win in a walk if he weren't a walking corpse, and as Gil Scott Heron said of Reagan, "they really wanted John Wayne".
The other half is that a majority of Republicans truly believe they are in an existential struggle with Democrats, that if they don't hold on to power by any means necessary they will be destroyed/replaced/canceled/eliminated in some vague but apocalyptic way. That's the root of all the Crazy. It's all hazy feelings of Doom, and even Trump is preferable to the Void staring into them.
" majority of Republicans truly believe they are in an existential struggle with Democrats, that if they don't hold on to power by any means necessary they will be destroyed/replaced/canceled/eliminated in some vague but apocalyptic way..."
Well, who can blame them? Two years of Democratic control of the White House, the Senate and the House, and gas is now THREE DOLLARS AND FIFTY CENTS A GALLON. If that's not a holocaust, I don't know what is. Plus the Democrats trying to murder them, either with lower prices on their prescription drugs or when the bridge they drive over every morning doesn't collapse because we fixed it through the infrastructure bill. Oh, they're crafty, those Democrats.
Nobody gets any more establishment than old McTurtle, and he’s said he’ll vote for him if Tubby’s nominated. Ron DeSantis has the charisma and appeal oh day-old McDonald’s french fries, and when his attempt at getting the nod goes down in flames he’ll line right up behind the imperial golf cart with the likes of former Gov. Kris KrispieCreme and other famous, nominal anti-Trump cons, both in office and out. The November election results were the trigger of another episode of what passes for soul searching in the GOP psyche (wherein they make it obvious to everyone but themselves that they have no soul), inevitably ending with them concluding they must double down on the things that wrought the disaster in the first place. All the while, the MSM will burble mud-puddle-deep musings about “What’s next for the Republican Party,” gullibly (or cynically) acting as if the Repukes are acting in good faith or in the interest of the nation. The dynamics of the Republican turn toward fascism in tension with the US’s liberal democratic ideals will definitely leave the national polity twisted, perhaps beyond recognition. It ain’t over yet. Buckle up!
But it all depends on what some voters in Iowa and New Hampshire decide two years from now. Given the average age of Iowa and New Hampshire Republican primary voters, half of the people who voted for Trump last time could be dead by 2024.
See now, that's what we count on Steve for – insightful maths with PURPOSE!
"How many Trump voters need to refuse vaccination for his share of the New Hampshire primary vote to drop below 30%?" would be an AWESOME word problem.
As Cpt Picard said, sitting squarely at the helm of his Singer, "Make It Sew!"
Maybe, but remember, the other primary candidates are also Repubs.
Comparing Obama to Hitler encapsulates the total wisdom of Thomas Sowell, Professor of the Uncle Tom Chair of Economic Sophistry at the Stanford Institute (no relation to the Palo Alto university). Trump became famous because of a silly TV “reality” show since Michael Milkin and Ivan Boesky weren’t available. He also was vehemently anti-Obama, which was what the Nat Rev boys and all Republicans really cared about. His campaign will be all racism and attacks on Biden, which is what Republicans care about now. The pseudoconservatives will get on board after Trump crushes DeSantis in the primaries because they’ll never back a Democrat.
"Stanford Institute (no relation to the Palo Alto university)" other than fellows, traveling...
(Wonder how much of FTX was paying Uncle Tom and is he going to have to get a real job now.)
Give him his due, he also thinks people should be allowed, in that great libertarian term of art, to sell any organs they might think they can do without.
I made a small amount with the Tooth Fairy – I'mo make BANK with the Kidney Fairy!
Ah, Chuckles Krauthammer. Sometimes when you get weighed down by all the good people taken from us too soon, it’s restorative to remember late, unlamented ghouls like Charles Krauthammer who are no longer around to work evil.
That feeling might be uncharitable and unchristian, but I’m going to own it.
Cool name tho – I always dug it.
Yeah, you visualize somebody beating the juice out of a cabbage. [Hammer emoji]
Well, I was thinking more along the lines of nazi-bashing, maybe because I kinda like cabbage on occasion...
When the only tool you've got is a Krauthammer...
Just-the-Tip Trumpers was always a perfect locution. You knew "just the tip" came with empty promises like "Don't worry, I'll pull out when the tax cuts kick in".
"You should go read that column."
Hard pass, pal.
Nah, it's Roy in his Village Voice Years, which means it's a pure joy to read. Roy would never recommend you read something from the National Review itself, he's got your safety and best interests in mind.
Ah. Thought it was referring to a Kristol column.
Maaaaaybe I'll take a gander, if I can't rustle up a goose...
I read 'em all. I am somewhat manic.
You crazy kid!
Gasp!
Fret not – I'll get around to it (those round ones are hard to get around here). Plumber's on the way, so gotta split my hours up competently...
Props to Trump, for finally outing the entirety of republicanism for the hardcore fascist enterprise it was/is. Anyone who does not see it is not looking (even the blind got braille). And those who shrug and go all in anyway are simply exposing their brownshirt selves (and leaving themselves wide open to the purging that inevitably follows...)
Uh... BRB. Wanna go read a really funny Bill Kristol thing for a change. He's usually good for an unselfaware phrase or two, but I always enjoy a little mortification of the flesh timelapse. Don't kinkshame me.
Steady there, and fret not. We eagerly await your review.
I got distracted by the Mona Charen piece. Man, she really still hates Trump. Gotta give her that. If she lives another, say, fifty years, she might evolve into an actual human being. (Please to remember I still don't trust Arianna Huffington.)
Then, you know, the article written by the guy who called a sitting Supreme Court Justice a goat fucking child molester and is now on your TV everywhere doing ham commercials or whatever. (Look, I keep the volume off.) He's still a foul beast, which no one will be surprised by, and was frankly okay with just the tip back then, too.
I figured I'd read the Ben Domenech article written by someone else, so I'm onto the baffling Steven Hayward thing. "After Obama--after three generations of liberalism *only slightly* interrupted by the Reagan Years", it begins, my emphasis, his apparent brainworms.
"The president will need to be bold in challenging the runaway power and reach of his own branch, against the fury of the bureaucracy itself, its client groups, and the media. This boldness is necessary to restore the restraint that a republican executive should have in our constitutional order."
Dude was literally mad Trump probably wouldn't wreck up the place and pwn the libz enough.
Mark Helprin: "A diet, caffeine-free Marxist (really, the only thing wrong with being a Marxist is being a Marxist); a driven, leftist crook; and an explosive, know-nothing demagogue —all are competing to see who can be even more like Mussolini than is Obama." And after calling Hillary "Our own Evita", he still says Trump is worse.
Kristol does the same, but also tuts about how vulgar Trump is, and also complains that he's not likely to disrupt liberal hegemony because "Hasn’t Donald Trump always been a man inclined to go along — indeed, impatient to get along — with history?"
Yes, Donald Trump, man of great respect for our institutions and well aware of how to make a legacy everyone will respect (why he was even almost smart enough about all that shit to not run), maybe a bit too wishy washy to really make any changes. Clearly that's the big problem here, since your patrician ears tune out the bigotry anyway.
He's still posting bullshit about how vulgar the man is, and how he worries about Trump's authoritarian tendencies, but I'm getting the impression they've traded safewords. Probably by courier, because all that gilt decor is a little uncouth. There's an element of "Won't someone rid me of all this meddlesome tolerance", and I'm pretty sure the whole thing was originally written in "Scorpion to Frog Pidgin".
The real joy, though, is possibly the Edwin Meese III piece. You remember ol'Edwin. He was mostly mad in 2016 that Trump was violating Reagan's Eleventh Commandment. (Incidentally, isn't this blasphemy?)
Given that his twitter stops at 2018 when he was cheering on Trump's rein of error, I'm assuming he's disappeared, mostly because I don't really want to spend much time on National Review even in an incognito window.
His last few tweets, and I assume whatever birdcage liner he's putting out now, are mostly the equivalent of him hiring a hooker and calling him by his dead lover's name. He can't make Trump *be* Reagan, but, you know, if the lights are off, baby, let's talk about those judges.
Dude. That is some mortification of the flesh by other means. This fucker opened the goddamned puzzle box in public, spent a few years flaying himself, and now he's the new Junior Cenobite. This poor bastard has got stigmata on his back in the image of Reagan.
(I'm aware that's all blasphemy, too, but that god has to get through my goddess to get to me, and I have my doubts about the omnipotence thing. Have you seen most of his followers lately?)
I have new respect for Roy, and wonder if he's interested in some nausea tips I've picked up from Disabled Twitter.
Looks at length and profanity of rant. So! Have you all missed me? *ducks* :-)
Welcome back!
Brava!
2 marks for the whole bloody thing, but specially this
"I'm getting the impression they've traded safewords. Probably by courier"
My wife spent a long awkward afternoon in a car with Ed Meese once...routine site visits but still...
Edit to add Meese is now "semi-retired" from the Heritage Foundation...
"Look, I keep the volume off."
Best way to watch commercials, especially those MIL-TECH BATTLE commercials with the chud in the khaki T-shirt implying you must REALLY hate both the troops AND America if you don't buy the cheap plastic crap he's shilling.
"some illegal immigrants are violent criminals,” Geraghty said, and when they do crimes they’re “briefly detained by police authorities and then released..."
Huh. Sounds awfully familiar somehow, but I just can't recall..
And a very weak attack on immigrants. You could hardly think of a demographic, some of which are *not* violent criminals. Maybe children under 5? but not for lack of motivation.
A lack of funds I hear.
I wonder, is this possibly a reference to the fact that MOTHERFUCKING STEVE FUCKING BANNON IS STILL NOT IN FUCKING PRISON DESPITE BEING FUCKING CONVICTED AND FUCKING SENTENCED? Sorry, some things just set me off, I mean, fuck.
As someone with a decades long hate-on for Grover Norquist that will have me cursing him every Friday until one of us is dead and when I curse people I mean it, I respect this dedication.
Horrifying true detail: I looked him up again trying to remember why it's Fridays, I still don't know, it might be the day he was born, and my top search result was "Grover Norquist on EBay! Yes Seriously We Have Grover Norquist On EBay."
I nearly clicked, but it will turn out I can't afford him and Elon will probably end up with him, and he'll like that. What's the tax stuff like on GoFundMes, anyway? I guess I could ask Norquist.
Hey, you need an emetic? He's on the board of people who select Time Magazine's Person of the Year.